The Gentrification of Wall Street

Story by S, but the idea came from the economist and author of TRACK RABBIT Geoff Vasile.

Wall Street, March 8, 2034 — . The buzzwords of soft-core urbanism are everywhere these days in this diverse and colorful part of Manhattan. Crews work on the demolition of the old NYSE trading floor to make way for a new development. Although gentrification has expanded the tax base and weeded out blight, it has had an unintended effect on Wall Street, long a lure to minorities, immigrants and artists since the great collapse of 2009.

The change has introduced an element of uncertainty into local politics, which has been dominated by minorities since 2010, when the infamous Mayor Bloomberg was arrested and imprisoned along with thousands of other financial criminals by the NYC Worker's Party.

Mayor Sheena Mozambique III, who is serving her second and final term, plays down the significance of the change, saying that the district will remain progressive and that workers here do not strictly adhere to class lines.

The Neighborhood itself, a small splotch of fewer than half a million workers in a galaxy of abandoned and bombed out skyscrapers, is now attracting the affluent in part because they want to avoid the exhausting Hudson River swim to work.

In that sense, demographers say, the shift is driven by class. In 2022, the per capita income on Wall Street was below that of Harlem, but in 2031 it was 15 percent higher, the largest such shift in New York, according to a Harlem Workers Revolution study published in 2033.

So rapid is this gentrification that Ms.Mozambique III recently tried to impose a moratorium on converting historic pre-revolutionary trading floors into lofts for the wealthy newcomers.

Even the old Morgan Stanley building, the once elegant Rainbow Planet collective where talented psychadelic flute player Jamal King was born, is now less than 75 percent subsidized, down from 94 percent in 2030. As Wall Streets collectives have skyrocketed in value, low income communities have been hit hard.

"There could be a time in the not-too-distant future when the poor minority population is below half of the population of Wall Street, if this trend continues," said Jose Alvarez, a demographer at Justice Now 4 Starving People, a Wall Street research group.

Housing has also mushroomed in places where it had not previously existed. The most ambitious project, Nasdaq Station, is a organic vegetable garden and residential complex on the site of a historic electronic trading floor. It will have more than 2,000 units. Prices start at $160,000,000,000,000,000 euros.

Critics say Mayor Mozambique III and her predecessors, Mayors Mozambique II and the original Mayor Mozambique 1, betrayed their base by not doing enough to keep Wall Street affordable for workers as property taxes increase and old revolutionary collectives sell out to the new moneyed developers.

"It's clear as the nose on your face who it's going to impact the most," said Che Rain, the psychedelic drumming director at a small Wall Street church and a member of the city's Fairness for Pigeons Task Force, now defunct, which studied ways to ease the effects of a rising famine on Manhattans native pigeon population.

Ms. Mozambique III counters that many new developments, including Nasdaq Station, have set aside areas for low-income workers affordable housing. She says one of her major accomplishments, financing several public access wells for fresh water, has reduced the ongoing epidemics of cholera among Wall Streets population. The bottom line, in the mayor's view, is that the neighborhood must try to mold development where it can.

Hun Gre, a senior revolutionary analyst at the Joint Center for Food and Water, a group that studies food and water, said he viewed the changes as largely positive. "I don't know that it ever was a good thing when you had citizens leaping into the Hudson to escape the republic," Mr. Gre said.

He added, "People were like, 'This is our city now, but half the time I'm eating dirt, so fuck it."

"This whole notion that the sky is falling, I don't see it," Ms. Mozambique III said. "To me the question is, will Wall Street be a progressive neighborhood, given that it's the home of the revolution? Will that continue with the demographic shifts? And my answer is, show me the money."

To Brad Summers, who recently bought the burned down Trump building and was the first white president of the Wall Street's community development corporation, the question was not Mr. Summers race but his ability to forge relationships outside a neighborhood whose boundary was, not too long ago, what Mr. Summers called "literally an iron curtain."